


In the Eventide

by JazzRaft



Series: Dark at Night [33]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 11:16:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9721868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: An impassioned interlude, away from all the trials of the day, leads to a question Noctis has always wanted to ask, but was always afraid that he never should.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/157243048657/i-dont-know-if-youve-been-asked-this-before-but) for #28 in [this prompt post.](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/156511645930/send-me-a-pairing-and-a-number-and-ill-write-you) And specially fluffified for your Valentine's Day reading pleasure~

“I’ll have him back by dawn, Ma, scout’s honor!”

Noctis tried to cover an undignified snort of laughter as Nyx threw the petulant remark over his shoulder. The withering sigh from Ignis was just too hilarious. Nyx was not dissuaded by it, clutching the prince’s hand and spiriting him off into the night despite every (very reasonable) objection to the outing. Any manner of monster could devour them both should they linger in the dark for too long, Ignis warned. But if Noctis wasn’t perturbed when the sun went down on his own, he was doubly confident when Nyx showed the same fearlessness for the night.

“Where are we even going?” Noctis asked him as they drew further away from camp.

“Anywhere, really,” Nyx sighed. “You and I are way over-due for some alone time.”

That quickened Noctis’s steps to fall in line with Nyx’s broad stride. He brought them down to the lake in the middle of Duscae, to a little thicket of bushes and trees well away from the sleeping catoblepas along the shores. Tucked clear of the distant highway and shaded from the searchlights of any passing airships, it was the perfect retreat from all the prying eyes of the nighttime.

Noctis admired the silver of the moonlight, cresting throughout the quiet ripples of the water. The night air was dewy and cool when he breathed it in. A subdued symphony of crickets and frogs and midnight creatures played all around them. The world was still and dusted with pearly light; resplendent in the eventide.

He glanced at Nyx to find him staring, a soft smile of utter serenity on his face. The moon was bright and shone in his eyes, shimmering them like starlight. The light washed pale across his skin, deepening the shadows of his hair with a tenebrous intensity, as if he were pulled from the night itself.

“What?” Noctis laughed to cut the silence, realizing they’d both been staring.

“Nothin’,” Nyx said with all of the fond airiness that meant the opposite.

He swept a few riotous strands of hair behind Noctis’s ear, the calloused pads of his fingers trailing just above his skin. His gaze roved along Noctis’s face; a silent caress from temple to chin before setting his lips upon it. A ghostly breeze of craggy skin teasing along his jaw before coming to rest upon his mouth.

They hadn’t been able to kiss like this in a while. Not long and slow and savoring. Everything had been happening too fast since Insomnia fell. It was a rigorous pattern of camping, waking, driving, and frantically revving the engine to the nearest hunt to earn enough gil to eat every night. There was no privacy to be had when survival was the priority, and sticking together was the only way to ensure it. So any intimacy between Noctis and Nyx had consisted of quick, passing kisses and curling as close as possible to each other within the crowded confines of the tent.

Noctis looped an arm around Nyx’s neck, rustling a sigh through the coarse hairs tickling around his lips. While the middle of the planes, a stone’s throw away from the haven, wasn’t the most accurate portrayal of “privacy,” the secluded grove provided enough of an illusion to feel like true solitude. Nyx’s hands curved along his hips and he walked Noctis back against a tree. He shifted against the rough bark until he found a spot that wasn’t so abrasive through his shirt, Nyx’s hands smoothing along his sides to relieve some of the discomfort.

“Just for a minute,” he mumbled against the corner of his mouth, kissing along his face until he was settled into the crook of his neck.

Noctis gave him a gratified purr in reply, craning his head back and combing his fingers through the smoothed arc of his hair. Weeks of stress loosened inside of him the deeper Nyx worked at the sensitive yield of flesh, winding a mesh of gentle circles into the creases of his throat. Noctis breathed out and let himself lay suspended in the feeling, carried within the steady press of Nyx’s arms and utterly enraptured by the warmth of his mouth, finding all of the secret grooves that could make every joint in his body unlock and render him an unguarded mess of want beneath him.

From where his head rested against the tree, Noctis looked up to find the sky open and glittering beyond the inky silhouette of the leaves above. Perfection was a word Noctis associated more with a curse than a virtue. All of his life, he’d struggled with it; struggled to achieve it, as well as struggled to convince himself that it was unattainable. That it didn’t even exist if it meant he could stop hurting himself to find it.

But this, this was perfect. This was everything the world had told him he shouldn’t want, was not a stroke in the portrait of perfection he should strive for. The night, the wild, the sinful caresses of his glaive in the darkness. They were all flawed, reckless things; things that were too stained and broken to befit the pleasuring of the future king.

But his vision was filled with stars, a chaotic spray of light all throughout the darkness. And the wild sounded so mystifying, concealing the native music in secretive folds of shadow. And Nyx was so warm and solid around him, a tangible ideal of everything Noctis had never known he’d wanted before he met him.

And it was perfect.

And he couldn’t stop the words from shivering out when Nyx’s deft tongue stroked along that one _spot_.

“Marry me.”

Nyx stilled above him and the magic of the moment suddenly slipped from Noctis’s grasp in a rush of panic. He hadn’t really said it, had he? He couldn’t have, he wasn’t _allowed_ to say that. Only in the most secret chambers of his heart could he ever indulge the fantasy. He could never ask for it out loud.

Nyx inched away from him, conflict flashing in the sterling-blue glint of his eyes. He’d really said it. Noctis knew it was dangerous to even think it, let alone say it… but why? Why did it have to be so despicable of him to want this one thing for himself? Why did it have to be _wrong_ for him to be in love with a man that had loved him back every day, rather than be in love with the idea of a woman who might not?

He didn’t _know_ Luna. Not as she was now. And she didn’t know him. Not enough to be in love. Not like how he was in love with Nyx. How come it seemed to make sense to everybody but him that he should marry someone he wasn’t even sure he had feelings for or had feelings for him, when he was certain, with his whole heart, that all of his feelings belonged to Nyx?

“Marry me?” he asked this time, clearer than the lost, breathy murmur that had fell beyond his control. This time, he really meant it; was absolutely certain of it the longer he looked at him, the longer he felt the phantom kisses along his neck. “Once this is all over? There’s no reason we can’t, right?”

“Noct…”

“I-I’ll talk to Luna about it. I think she’ll understand. It’ll be fine! This engagement was only a trick anyway, there’s no reason we have to go through with it… I think? It’ll be fine, I-I’ll make it fine, we can make it work…”

The silence was destroying him. He didn’t know how to read his eyes. Maybe it wasn’t even the betrothal that was keeping him from saying yes. Maybe it was just too big of a commitment. Nothing they’d done up until this point had been traditional - mostly by accident - but maybe that was how Nyx had preferred it. Maybe marriage was too much tradition for this freeform framework they’d been working in.

“You know what, forget I said anything,” Noctis heard himself saying, shaking on the inside and putting on a faltering smile as he tried to play it off. “That was dumb, I just got caught up… It’s been a long couple of weeks, I-I don’t know what I was saying. Just, um… Let’s just get back into the mood, ‘kay?”

He quickly reached up to kiss him and try to make the both of them forget about his fumble. But Nyx pushed a finger into his chest and nudged him back against the tree. He looked at Noctis for a long moment, and he was stricken with horror that he’d just ruined everything between them.

Which was why he was stunned and confused when Nyx reached down to pluck two blades of grass from the ground. He lifted Noctis’s right hand and wrapped one around his ring finger, carefully twisting the two ends into a firm knot. Then he guided the prince’s hand to repeat the process onto his own, Noctis’s fingers moving by themselves to tug the knot into place.

“Not a great proposal if you don’t have a ring,” Nyx finally said, examining the makeshift wedding bands with an amused snort. “Oh, right! Yes, by the way. In case that didn’t go without saying.”

“You jerk!” Noctis laughed, pushing at his chest. “How long were you going to leave me hanging like that?”

“Sorry, not sorry,” Nyx said, curling an arm around his waist and tugging him close. “You’re cute when you’re nervous.”

“Maybe cute to you,” Noctis grumbled. “Doesn’t exactly feel that way when you’re the one that’s nervous.”

“C’mere.”

Nyx chuckled and wrapped his other arm around his shoulders, hugging him to his chest and kissing his head in apology. It calmed his nerves in an instant. He draped his arms around Nyx’s waist, feeling the carefully composed ring of grass on his skin.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?”

“Guard duty is _really_ boring. Learn to do lots of dopey stuff.”

“I don’t think it’s dopey.”

Noctis hugged him a little tighter, unable to pull himself any closer than this. He sighed, feeling all of the warmth come racing back into him. It was so easy to forget everything that would come up against them in the future when it was just the two of them like this. The only thing that Noctis wanted more than this was to make the moment last for an eternity. To keep the sun from rising and bringing all of the chaos of the waking world to break this dream.

“Do you really want to marry me?” he whispered, thinking that maybe if he heard it one more time, he could carry this feeling with him for the rest of the oncoming days; as if this night really was forever.

“Yeah,” Nyx replied, breathing into his hair. “Yeah, I really do.”


End file.
